Harvard & UNC lawsuits: LEGACY PREFERENCE

<p>This year, Harvard needs to find 700 families who can pay $60k per year. Harvard has to find another 700 next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.</p>

<p>Legacy admissions is about finding hundreds of full payors year after year after year after year. Really not about donors. Since Harvard rejects 70% of the legacies that apply, legacy admissions would be a HORRIBLE strategy for increasing donations.</p>

<p>It is a very good strategy for enrolling hundreds of students whose families can full pay. Kids of doctors and lawyers and bankers. Not the kids of billionaires. </p>

<p>Developing donors who will put their name on a building is a very different exercise.</p>

<p>Come on! Not all legacy kids are full pay. This is silly. And Harvard and the other Ivies are need blind. </p>

<p>^Even at Harvard. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>I don’t think the admissions office has a clue if I gave $50 every year or $1000. I don’t think they even know that I gave something every year, which I think I have ever since they finally divested from South Africa back in the apartheid days.</p>

<p>But northwesty, even assuming that all legacies are full pay (which they aren’t), they don’t need to go to legacies to find more-than-enough kids of doctors / lawyers / bankers who are full pay. </p>

<p>In my daughter’s school all legacies I know are very rich, families had multiple generations attending, many family members held visible public positions and are involved with alumni associations. I would assume donations to the school are at the appropriate level. Kids grew up attending school functions on campus and in the clubs in Manhattan and elsewhere. I know some that actually wanted to attend a peer school but it seems family tradition prevailed. I just do not see how you can discard these connections in favor of some daughter of a fresh of the boat immigrant like myself. I would be ok if she did not get in as I have never heard about this university until a few years ago.</p>

<p>Oh, really, come on. The majority of legacies are “merely” the plain-vanilla ones, who aren’t involved with alumni associations beyond perhaps attending an event every now and then, who are not donating at any significant level. And there is a world beyond Manhattan. </p>

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<p>Legacies of Harvard will, on average, be from higher SES families than typical high school seniors. Even though some will get financial aid, the legacies of Harvard will likely need less financial aid on average than non-legacies.</p>

<p>It would seem like H’s legacy admits are just as competitive academically as the rest of the admit pool:
<a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2018 By the Numbers”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/admissions/&lt;/a&gt;
Which begs the question that @cpt raised, if they don’t need the admissions preference, then why offer it at all?</p>

<p>What is missing from this bar chart is the breakdown by race of the legacy bar vs the non-legacy bar.</p>

<p>I get tired of the conspiracy theories on CC. We can do better. </p>

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<p>Wouldn’t the legacy applicant pool reflect the racial/ethnic distribution of Harvard graduates of a few decades ago? Of course, the distribution may not necessarily be the same for admitted and enrolled students, particularly if Harvard considers race/ethnicity in admissions (which it says it does).</p>

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If they were transparent about it, then less people would waste their time imagining all kinds of conspiracies.</p>

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<p>Well duh. The same is true for the plan vanilla admits. By definition, admissions to highly selective private schools will be from higher SES families by far (not just “average”).</p>

<p>The legacy pool is 89 % white. <a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2018 By the Numbers”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/admissions/&lt;/a&gt;
Of the remaining 11 %, there is no breakdown of URM versus ORM.
30 years ago, there were significantly fewer Asian students enrolled at all the elite colleges.</p>

<p>The legacy students have a very high admit rate, but according to Fitzsimmons, they are a self selecting group of applicants.<br>
<a href=“Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/&lt;/a&gt;
“If you look at the credentials of Harvard alumni and alumnae sons and daughters, they are better candidates on average,” said Fitzsimmons, part of what he sees as the explanation for the disparity in the acceptance rate. “Very few who apply have no chance of getting in.”</p>

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<p>Yes, I do. Absolutely. The way it works (or used to work – I don’t have current info but this is the way it worked in the mid-2000s) at Brown is that alumni relations generates a printout for every legacy applicant that itemizes what the alum parents have done – volunteer work and financial contributions. This printout becomes part of the admission folder. I would bet that every school does something similar. </p>

<p>Um, I think folks need to be cautious with what they have heard and how they extrapolate from that. Especially when suggesting a need blind school is, in fact, making decisions based on ability to pay. </p>

<p>Strictly speaking, donation history is not need, although it (and legacy status in and of itself) may have some correlation to a lower expected level of financial need.</p>

<p>It is certainly possible for a school claiming to be need blind to use admission criteria which correlate with need or lack thereof, whether or not the purpose is to manipulate the SES demographics of the class with an eye on the financial aid budget. Examples include legacy (correlates to lower need) and first generation (correlates to higher need). Even basic credentials like SAT or ACT scores correlate to lower need.</p>

<p>@Pizzagirl,</p>

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<p>I mentioned Manhattan because their main club is there. They may have something in Chicago too.
My daughter was interviewed by a plain-vanilla legacy. An Asian women who grew up in an average suburban town. She now lives in a richer town 10 miles away from her old town and works at some financial company doing 9-5 job to have more time for her HS age kids. Although she liked her college experience it did not change her life drastically. She would like her kids to attend her alma-mater but she realized that chances were small.</p>

<p>“Come on! Not all legacy kids are full pay. This is silly. And Harvard and the other Ivies are need blind.” </p>

<p>Legacy admissions are a great way to admit high SES full payors while still adhering to being need blind. “We’re not admitting them because they are smart and rich. We don’t look at ability to pay, of course. We’re admitting them because they are smart and already know the fight song and the secret handshake!!”</p>

<p>Not every single legacy admit is a full pay. Duh. But since you can’t/won’t look at need, the legacy pool is an awfully good pond to fish in if you are looking for full payors and reduce the need for financial aid. For example, there’s not one single first generation kid in that pool. </p>

<p>The average SAT scores of the legacy students this year was 59 points higher than the average Harvard student. This is calculated from a pool composed of big donor family students (development) and plain-vanilla ones. The development students most likely have lower stats. Therefor the plain-vanilla legacy students admitted must have even higher stats. </p>

<p>Legacy families know admission is holistic. The legacy students applying have the complete package. High stats, great EC, with leadership and arts or athletics. I think this is also why they are being admitted. </p>

<p>Nope, there are no first gens among legacy kids. But just because H grads may “average” high incomes, don’t assume only the kids of Wall Street types will apply. </p>

<p>Try to separate assumptions out.</p>